Published 4:00 am, Saturday, April 1, 2006

Photo: Lea Suzuki

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grammy21_087_ls.jpg Green Day (from left: Mike Dirnt, Tre' {accent over the e} Cool and Billie Joe Armstrong) accept their award at the San Francisco Chapter's 2006 Recording Academy Honors. Music luminaries Dave Brubeck,� George Duke, three-time Grammy winners Green Day and the San Francisco Blues Festival have been named as recipients of the San Francisco Chapter's 2006 Recording Academy Honors.�The gala event, which will attract recording artists, key entertainment executives and community leaders, will be held Sunday, March 19, at 6 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the historic Westin St. Francis in San Francisco's Union Square.
Photo taken on 3/19/06 in San Francisco, CA. Photo by Lea Suzuki/ The San Francisco ChronicleRan on: 03-21-2006
East Bay punk rock trio Green Day accepts a Recording Aca- demy Honors trophy Sunday at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT. less

grammy21_087_ls.jpg Green Day (from left: Mike Dirnt, Tre' {accent over the e} Cool and Billie Joe Armstrong) accept their award at the San Francisco Chapter's 2006 Recording Academy Honors. Music luminaries ... more

Billie Joe Armstrong, the unabashedly political lead singer for the band Green Day, spoke to a crowd of friends, fans and supporters in San Francisco recently, noting that in the world of politics, "the word liberal has been looked on as sort of weak."

But, Armstrong defiantly told his young audience, not any more. "To me," he said, "it's more of a sense of empowerment."

With that in mind, the Berkeley-based Grammy Award-winning trio -- Armstrong, drummer Tre Cool and bass player Mike Dirnt -- are asking hundreds of thousands of fans and potential young voters to take out their cell phones at Green Day concerts and register to vote via text messaging.

And Green Day concert fans also are likely to hear from volunteers driving home a message about political activity with information on issues, candidates, events, blogging and Internet forums.

The megaband, which has won legions of fans around the globe for its powerful political messages -- like its hit CD, "American Idiot" -- is at the forefront of an effort to fire up youth voters in a way that observers say blends art, politics and technology into a potentially powerful organizing tool.

Its partner: Music for America (www.musicforamerica.org), a nonprofit organization based in the Mission District that has garnered 60,000 supporters nationwide. It has started an unusually ambitious effort to boost the ranks of progressive voters -- beginning years before they can enter the voting booth.

The 3-year-old Bay Area organization's work with Green Day has expanded into partnerships with 350 bands and artists, including Death Cab for Cutie, the Beastie Boys and Usher.

"Our mission is to engage young people in politics through music communities every day," says Molly Moon Neitzel, 27, the organization's president. "You can talk the talk -- but to walk the walk, you have to register voters every day."

Already this year, the music organization plans to begin an unusual get-out-the-vote approach: It has partnered with Mobile Voter to start a text-messaging campaign called TXTVoter.

Here's how it works:

Musicians such as Green Day will ask concert fans to register to vote on their cell phone by punching in a name as a text message and a numerical code of where to send it. The cell phone holder will receive a message back: "Reply with your full name and address to receive voter registration forms."

The forms are sent via postage-paid envelopes to Music for America; the organization then submits completed forms to the secretary of state's office.

And the group will send out an election-day reminder to vote via text messaging -- a first in the U.S. political organizing, members say.

A recent study by the New Democrat Network's New Politics Institute suggests that such efforts targeted specifically to what it calls the voters of the Millennial Generation could have big payoffs.

"If there is one single set of actors who could fundamentally shake up the political landscape in the coming decade, it's the Millennials," Peter Leyden, the New Politics Institute strategic network director, writes in the findings. "They have all the ingredients to make a huge impact."

Democrats are especially poised to benefit from activism of the 18-25 voters, the study shows.

"Their sheer numbers represent 25 percent of the population," and while their political profile is still forming, they have already shown distinct progressive leanings, the report says. "The majority of those Millennials who could vote in the 2004 presidential election voted for Democrat John Kerry -- the only other generation to do so were the aging GI generation, now in their 80s."

Moreover, they are the only generation to have come of age entirely in a computer age -- so Millennial voters "live and breathe these new technologies and media," a factor recognized best by the 2004 presidential campaign of Democrat Howard Dean and his Web-savvy campaign manager, Joe Trippi.

Past efforts by Music for America have shown the promise of more rewards. In the last presidential effort -- using 20,000 volunteers and 200 bands -- the organization focused on about 2 million voters across the nation. That was just one of a number of organizing efforts that fueled gains in youth voting in 2004 when nearly 12 million 18- to 24-year-olds turned up at the polls, a spike of 11 percent from the 2000 election.

This year, Neitzel said, the target is to reach as many as 5 million young Americans -- and register at least 50,000 of them.

But unlike other star-studded get-out-the-vote efforts -- such as P. Diddy's "Vote or Die" or MTV's "Rock the Vote" -- Music for America is, like Green Day's Armstrong, strongly partisan and progressive in its agenda.

The organization's leaders also say they're already at work appealing to the next generation of voters -- 14- to 18-year-olds.

"We start targeting them when they're 15 -- because 16-year-olds today will vote in the 2008 elections," Neitzel said. "To push the country in a progressive direction, it's not about this year, or 2008 ... it's about a generational movement."

Music for America's sophisticated youth outreach bears close watching, political insiders said.

"Technology has exploded the potential for political activity, especially among young people, whether (they hear the message) from musicians ... or Internet interaction," says California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres. "Those are persuasive tools in their community."

Democrats aren't alone in their eagerness to woo the younger generation of voters.

"The Republican Party is making important gains in a critical constituency," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. Bounds pointed to the Internet-based MyGOP (www.gop.com/mygop), recently launched by the party to engage young voters on college campuses with efforts like March Madness, a drive to build volunteerism and fundraising.

"The youth vote is becoming increasingly important, and we're integrating technology through podcasts," blogs and computer-based efforts that will help 2006 candidates -- and beyond. Already, he said, there's been a payoff with "pretty big strides and some real gains in target areas."

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom warned progressive groups that a one-note message -- such as an anti-President Bush theme -- will not be enough to get young voters to the polls. "You have got to give them the expectation that things will improve if they go out and vote," he said. "It's the Democrats' biggest challenge. It's not enough to say, 'Stop this person.' Beyond that, it's, 'What's next?' "

Bay Area philanthropist Deborah Rappaport, a major Democratic donor with her husband, Andy, and a financial supporter of Music for America, said the effort connects "the social and cultural aspects of young people's lives with voting. It's not having big rock stars stand up on stage and say "vote for so and so." It's more finding (young voters) where they are, speaking to them in a language that they can be receptive to."

Green Day drummer Tre Cool said his band is in a fortunate position to combine political and cultural activism, although he acknowledges that they're still an exception in the music industry.

"If you're not going to be honest with yourself, there's no point in having a voice," he said.

Generations of voters

Political groups are looking for new ways to woo younger voters as they seek to expand their support. The New Politics Institute recently put together a profile of America's younger voters -- nicknamed the "Millennial Generation" -- and compared them with their parents. Among the highlights:

Transitional Millennials

Ages: 18-22, born 1984-1988

Characteristics: came of age during the Clinton years, show strong optimism about their ability to achieve and about political process

Politically: more likely than any other generation to be Democratic and progressive, though one third are still unsure of their affiliation

Issues: economy, environment, social issues

Cusp Millennials

Ages: 23-28, Born 1978-1983

Characteristics: Came of age during the first Clinton term, strongest preferences of any generation regarding environmental protection issues

Characteristics: Slice of the overall Baby Boom generation (which began in 1946) that came of age in a period of cultural turmoil, during Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter years. Values-driven, pragmatic

Politically: Fairly evenly divided between parties, though very sharp gender gap between strongly Democratic women and more conservative Republican men

Issues: Substantially more negative and pessimistic about politics and political leaders, least confident of all generations about their economic future

Teen Millennials

The pollsters also surveyed and predicted the voting habits of teenagers 13-17 -- the next group of young voters.

Ages: 13-17, born 1989-1993

Characteristics: Came of age in a world shaped by the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, concerned particularly with security, crime, yet confident about their future

Issues: Education, Iraq war

Party: Split among Democrats, Republicans and independents, considered "up for grabs"

Source: March 2006 poll of 1,400 Americans by the New Politics Institute prepared by Frank Magid Associates

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